Mark Zuckerberg has started his 2019 challenge of doing public debates — here are the highlights from the first one (FB)

Rob Price, provided by Published 6:23 pm CST, Wednesday, February 20, 2019 Mark Zuckerberg took part in an interview with Harvard Law School professor Jonathan Zittrain. It’s part of the billionaire Facebook CEO’s challenge for 2019 to take part in public debates about the impact of tech on society. The discussion touched on a number of topics, including privacy and the blockchain. He also had one awkward gaffe, when he apparently forgot about the Facebook Portal speaker. Mark Zuckerberg has kicked off his personal challenge for 2019 of engaging in public debates about Facebook. Every year, the 34-year-old billionaire chief exec sets himself often-whimsical challenges — from only eating meat from animals he killed himself, to building an AI assistant to help around his home. For 2019, after months of sustained criticism around Facebook’s endless scandals, Zuckerberg said that “every few weeks I’ll talk with leaders, experts, and people in our community from different fields and I’ll try different formats to keep it interesting.” Nearly two months into year, we’ve now seen the first take place: A discussion with Professor Jonathan Zittrain at Harvard Law School. Here are some of the key highlights, from Zuckerberg’s ruminations on the potential for the blockchain, to an awkward gaffe. People don’t really want to pay not to see ads, the CEO argues. One topic of discussion was the idea of an ad-free Facebook that users would pay to access. “I personally don’t believe that very many people would like to pay to not have… [Read full story]